Sir James Jeans, in full Sir James Hopwood Jeans (born Sept. 11, 1877, London, Eng.—died Sept. 16, 1946, Dorking, Surrey) English physicist and mathematician who was the first to propose that matter is continuously created throughout the universe. He made other innovations in astronomical theory but is perhaps best known as a writer of popular books about astronomy.

Jeans

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Jeans taught at the University of Cambridge (1904–05, 1910–12) and at Princeton University (1905–09). In 1923 he became a research associate at Mt. Wilson Observatory, Pasadena, Calif., where he remained until 1944. In 1928, the year he was knighted, he proposed his continuous-creation theory.

His work included investigations of spiral nebulae, the source of stellar energy, binary and multiple star systems, and giant and dwarf stars. He also analyzed the breakup of rapidly spinning bodies under the stress of centrifugal force and concluded that the nebular hypothesis of Laplace, which stated that the planets and Sun condensed from a single gaseous cloud, was invalid. He proposed instead the catastrophic or tidal theory, first suggested by the American geologist Thomas C. Chamberlin. According to this theory, a star narrowly missed colliding with the Sun and, in its passing, drew away from the Sun stellar debris that condensed to form the planets.

Jeans applied mathematics to problems in thermodynamics and radiant heat and wrote on other aspects of radiation. Among his many popular books, perhaps his best were The Universe Around Us (1929) and Through Space and Time (1934). His important technical works include The Dynamical Theory of Gases (1904), Theoretical Mechanics (1906), The Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism (1908), and Introduction to the Kinetic Theory of Gases (1940).

Learn More in these related articles:

...20th century, it became clear that there is much more to the universe than meets the eye. On the basis of early estimates of the mass density of the Milky Way, English physicist and mathematician James Jeans suggested in 1922 that the galaxy might contain three times as many dark stars as visible ones. In 1933 Fritz Zwicky, by studying the dynamics of clusters of galaxies, concluded that...

...Wilhelm Wien between 1890 and 1900. Wien had virtually exhausted the resources of thermodynamics in dealing with this problem. Two British scientists, Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt) and Sir James Hopwood Jeans, had by 1900 applied the newly developed science of statistical mechanics to the same problem. They obtained results that, though in agreement with Wien’s thermodynamic...

...of the 20th century, several scientists decided that the deficiencies of the nebular hypothesis made it no longer tenable. The Americans Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin and Forest Ray Moulton and later James Jeans and Harold Jeffreys of Great Britain developed variations on the idea that the planets were formed catastrophically—i.e., by a close encounter of the Sun with another star. The...

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(1877-1946). One of the great astronomers and physicists of modern times was also one of the most enjoyable and interesting writers on science. James Jeans expressed complex astronomical and physical concepts in simple words. He was the first to propose that matter might be created continuously throughout the universe.